Well this is a old idea that never went anywhere because I was to new to Source at the time to know how to really build some thing to run as a mod. Never the less I may take it up again some day, when I can also add some other custom assets that were needed to continue this mod. It was supposed to be a side mission in the HL 2 storyline about two to three weeks before Gordon Freeman makes his comes back in HL 2.

This was the first map, purely designed as an introduction, as the player rides through a cart to the old factory. I only got as far as the loading bay, and then I was going to have a map transition. That is where I stopped.

Looking back at the starting room...

This is when I was learning displacements too (seen in the hillside).

Other pics, when nearing the factory building...

Inside the loading bay...

You can see I relied on darkness, but it also made it lack detail in some cases. There are also some other things noted like, some missing buildings that needed to be off in the distance and so on. Thats it for now, and some day when I can refine my skills this may present itself once again.

whilst the other was a flatgrass sized gmod map designed for boats planes and ground vehicles. Got further, but due to sloppy work on the cliffs poor optimisation and too much dead space I decided to stop.

as well as it having a ring of buttons that once started pressed each other indefinetly.

How did you get those textures to cast those beautiful shadows? I can't get TextureShadows to work unless they're models or I copy the non-translucent parts with blocklight brushes...

That's projected shadow, not lightmapped one. As you can see, there are accurate shadows on railings too, which are props (and everyone knows that the shadows VRAD produces on props/models are something not that nice).

Gary wrote:They are lightmapped. There is no fading and the shadow is not using the crappy filter that Source's shadow mapping uses.

Take a look at the top trim where shadow is cast a little. I saw there some of that shitty grainy-edge thing Source does with projected shadows, which is not happening when it's lightmapped. Really, it's obvious. If not, then it's broken lightmap shadows.. which I doubt.